Did they study the paint chemicals themselves to see if that by itself was a natural bug repellant?
Did they check if the paint chemicals are even safe for cows?
🤔
What if it's just the white stripes (not the band)? Do white cows have the same number of flies? What if you paint them with black stripes?
Maybe those are answered in the article, but I'll never read it.
LOL, same. Not worth the reading time. Any which way you twist it, there's still probably way too many unknown factors.
Yes. They had a control group with only black stripes along with an unpainted group. I would have to assume they also checked the paints for potential repellents, but I only skimmed the article.
I haven’t read the study, but most of these would need a placebo group, so divide the herd into thirds, one with no paint, one with stripes, and one fully painted white to get a baseline for each group. Also would be good to randomize which group each cow goes in each day so to rule out one cow who is especially tasty to flies.
I've not seen the study referenced, but if I were doing it I'd have cows I painted with white paint, white stripes, black paint, and a control I left unpainted.
A control group where they mix the colors together and paint them grey would answer that
Can a biting fly even penetrate paint, to consume that precious bovine blood?
What if you actually read the study before asking questions 😅😜🤔
In the cited study with buckets, it was shown that striped and spotted surfaces attract fewer flies.
That makes me think if Nguni cattle
have an easier time with those pests.If yes, that would be another plus for hardy landraces in place of overengineered, capitalmaxxed breeds.
So, I was able to convince a coworker that I had a friend who worked at our nearby zoo, and that my friend let me in on the secret that zebras aren't real, they're just horses painted to look like that, "big zoo is lying to us to get our money," you know.
Well, long story short I'm gonna need to steal this image from you and crop it, thanks.
I'm going on holiday to Cambodia in February. Guess I'll bring my body paint supplies and run around in war stripes over my body.
now that the song is playing forcefully in my brain i'm going to make you suffer with me
Don't forget to pack a wife.
YESSS BEAT ME TO IT LMAO
Can confirm, insects are drawn to brightness
Luckily my soul is dark and bitter.
Why has evolution let these cows down?
I mean, we kind of hijacked evolution in favor of hypergrowth and ludicrous gazongas a long time ago.
Hippity, hoppity. Your natural selection is now my property!
Reminds me of a donkey I saw in Mexico painted like a zebra trying to trick tourists
Sure, but there's also the secondary market of people who think it's hilarious to get a photo with a donkey painted like a zebra to trick tourists. Lean into it a bit, like wrestling, it could be fun.
After 10 Pacificos I will in fact be leaning
I'm about to start dressing like beetlejuice
If they figure out if it's the white stripes or black stripes that do the trick they could reach 100%.
I first read function as in mathemetical function, now I wonder, what the avarege zebras stripes function is
Pedantic warning: it’s not a conventional function, cuz it’d be multivalued for any given input no matter where you put the axes lol
Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.
Moobra
That's where Hershey's Cookies and Cream chocolate bars are from!
Wait wait wait, I'm calling bullshit. I see no udders, nor any horns. That's obviously two people wearing a striped cow costume for Halloween, duh.
What if the flies just hated the smell of the paint lol
If you say Beeflejuice three times....
Interesting. A while ago, I read that zebra stripes were meant to confuse predators. Basically, the idea was that when they ran as a herd, their stripes made it difficult to tell where one zebra ended and the other began. I wonder if that's considered bunk now or if this is supposed to be an additional benefit.
Cute dog
Can someone forward this to Trump's team
Awesome. Now narrow down the mechanism with further research.
Sure, that it wasn't the smell of the paint, that drove the insects away?
Do zebras smell of paint?
This doesn't help very much.
See, some people think forcible sterilization is never acceptable, and yet we have multiple comments from people that didn't read the study asking if the authors thought of something.
Maybe you'd know if you were literate.
You can have your balls back if you do your homework.
This thread is like a Reddit/Lemmy Smart Guy combo. People who just assume paid researchers didn't consider this extremely basic thing they learned about in high school, and also hinting at IQ-based eugenics
Alright, so for the idiots here, how is this not a study showing that paint repels mosquitos?
The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes
Black paint was not as effective as black and white paint.
Yay, more animal abuse.
how exactly is painting a cow animal abuse? I'm curios
